Abstract

High altitude balloon (HAB) missions can be and are used to teach concepts related to spacecraft and satellite design. A HAB mission, however, presents unique characteristics, which must be understood and respected to produce a desirable outcome. Because of this, flying an unaltered satellite design as a HAB payload would be as undesirable as utilizing an unaltered HAB design as a satellite. A well-defined process for HAB mission design is thus needed. The process presented mirrors commonly used space mission design processes to facilitate easy transition between the two. It is also comparatively simple, due to the smaller scale of many HAB missions and to facilitate the use of the HAB mission analysis and design (HAB-MAD) process as a stepping-stone to teach space mission analysis and design to students.

How to Cite:

Straub, J. & Fevig, R. A., (2012) “Formalizing Mission Analysis and Design Techniques for High Altitude Ballooning”, Academic High Altitude Conference 2012(1), 44–55. doi: https://doi.org//ahac.8323